FIG. 1 shows an example of the construction of a network for supplying web services to mobile users. The network comprises: a mobile user terminal (11) located in a mobile network (21); a contents server (12) for supplying contents service in the Internet (22); and a GW (gateway) server (13) used as a repeater in the case where access is made from the mobile network (21) to the Internet (22).
The network is constructed so that, when a user wishes to receive a web service from the contents server (12), as shown in FIG. 2, in order to reach a desired service, the user first selects a screen having a tree structure in a menu form and then successively selects lower-rank screens.
For example, a service menu (31) is a screen for selecting a desired service from a service 1 (32), a service 2 (33), and a service n (34). The service 1 (32) is a screen for selecting a submenu from a submenu A (35), a submenu B (36), and a submenu C (37). Thus, information supplied as a service is successively selected from a group of screens having a tree structure in a menu form.
FIG. 9 shows each screen information constituting the above service in a conventional system. In this system, a desired service is selected from a service menu screen (61) provided by a GW server (13). After that, the user successively selects a desired service from screens provided by a contents server (12) for supplying the selected service, that is, a desired service from a top menu screen (62), a desired service from a submenu screen (63), and a desired service from a detailed menu (64) in that order to display desired supply information.
In FIG. 9, the screen informations constituting the above service (for example, in the case of a service 1 shown in FIG. 9, screen information in a top menu (62), a submenu B (63), a detailed menu b (64), and a supply information I (65)) are transferred as informations independent of one another to the user terminal (11), and these screen informations are not recognized as a series of service elements.
For this reason, for example, upon the occurrence of congestion in the GW server (13), the GW server (13) cannot judge whether the screen provided by the contents service (11) is a request for a new service or a request for screen information along the way to contemplated information during the execution of a series of services. Therefore, the GW server (13) should equally process all the requests for access. This disadvantageously results in a prolonged wait time for the service. Otherwise, the GW server (13) should cut off all the requests for access.